Sig Christenson: The link between deployments and suicides

Maybe an hour had passed since I filed our first blog on last Sunday’s story, “The War Within,” when a new report on military suicides came out. Produced by the RAND Corp., its title gave me the shivers.

The 229-page report, prepared for Defense Secretary Robert Gates, offered few surprises and an overdue truth. It revealed that, yes, our conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have indeed played a role in a variety of problems faced by returning veterans, including suicide. There is a war going on, this one to survive what you’ve seen and heard and lived — and now reverberates through your brain.

Those of us who’ve followed this story, who have spent countless hours with soldiers and families through this past decade of fighting, knew there was a link between war and suicide. You didn’t have to be a psychiatrist to figure it out. Still, the official acknowledgment is a breakthrough of sorts because it was only 10 months or so ago that the Army’s chief of staff, Gen. George Casey Jr., finally conceded the point in a relatively short interview in San Antonio.

It was April, and he was at a conference here. Casey cited relationships, money and work problems, as well as drug and alcohol abuse as major factors in many of the Army’s suicides. However, he noted that frequent deployments were a factor, saying, “As I look at it, it has to add stress.”

Maybe Casey had said this somewhere else. Over all the time I’ve reported on the story, though, I hadn’t heard him or other Army leaders say it and, in fact, often heard the argument that other problems were in play. They’d talk about substance abuse, financial disasters, and strained and broken relationships, but never the service’s insanely high operational tempo.

I’d often hear that the vast majority of soldiers were not killing themselves. One-third of those committing suicide, they’d say, had never deployed. I’ll give them that; both statements were true enough, and yet not so true.

The Army’s vice chief of staff, Gen. Peter Chiarelli, struck a familiar talking point in a prepared statement sent to me last week. Soldiers, he said, “display an amazing level of resiliency” even after three and four tours, and he’s right. But something is also definitely wrong when suicides rise as they have since 2001 in the Army and on Fort Hood, which set a record for the service in 2010 with 22 GIs killing themselves — a mark that could grow because investigations continue in some of the deaths.

So what’s happening?

If you think it’s the war, you’re onto something. RAND said the Defense Department suicide rate has doubled from 2001 to 2008. The RAND report ties the sharp increase to the Army’s rate. It is highest among the services at 19.5 suicides per 100,000, while the Marine Corps has a rate of 18.5.

The Marines and Army have borne the weight of fighting the “long war,” as our conflicts are now called, since the very beginning.

Coincidence?

Because both branches were relatively small given the missions they faced, their troops went back to the war zone again and again and again.

Congress finally increased the number of soldiers and Marines, but it came too late for some with four, five and six deployments. One soldier who killed himself last year at Fort Hood had gone to the war zone seven times.

While he might have volunteered for some of those tours, not everyone does. Some specialties are simply so small that troops will be in the war zone every other year. Meanwhile, one in three GIs has never deployed.

The result: one Army goal, to increase “dwell time” at home to two years for every year in combat, is a pipe dream for attack and utility helicopter pilots, and the crews who help keep those aircraft ready to fly.

I ran into one airman last year in Afghanistan who was on his ninth combat tour. His job is calling in air strikes, a field with about 1,000 airmen.

My stepson, who refuels tactical vehicles, is on his fourth tour of Iraq.

Casey and Chiarelli know all this, and they had good reason to think that repeated deployments were a terrible strain on soldiers and families.

I’m sure they’re doing what they can, and that they’re frustrated.

Still, you wonder why the Army’s leadership couldn’t have admitted the obvious sooner. What was the point of avoiding it when men and women were dying?

Chiarelli recently told me the Army’s suicide problems are the “canary in the mineshaft” for the civilian world. RAND statistics show that a civilian population comparable to military demographics actually had a higher suicide rate from 2001 to 2006, but adds, “Of concern, however, is that the gap between DoD and the general population is closing.”

I’m not sure how far you can go in comparing military suicides to those among civilians. A cynical person might think it’s a way of deflecting attention from a problem that has generated a ton of headlines. But the one certainty is that you can’t find another profession, outside of civilian contractors who’ve worked in Iraq and Afghanistan, that has had such high-risk jobs or been so emotionally and physically battered, and then ordered back to war again.

RAND tells us the most of the military suicides occur among men. The Army’s deaths come mostly among lower-enlisted soldiers. Troops with post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and other anxiety issues are at greater risk of suicide, as are those with head injuries or who abuse illicit and prescription drugs. And RAND talks of something those familiar with the military know well: Binge drinking is part of the culture.

While drug use is not prevalent in the military largely due to routine screening, approximately 20 percent of service members report heavy alcohol use,” the report stated.

RAND defines binge drinking as having five or more drinks in one sitting at least once a week, but soldiers in and out of the war zone have told me they drank early and often as their deployments neared. Back in 2008, in Baghdad, one GI on his third tour told me of making runs to Fort Hood’s “Class 6” before going to back to Taji for the second time.

The Class 6 is a post liquor store.

“I would go to a Class 6 after I got off of work and get a fifth of Wild Turkey and a case of Bud Light and drink until I passed out or drank everything and fell asleep,” said the GI, a specialist.

Why did he do that? After telling me about the body parts he scraped out of blown-up tactical vehicles during the 4th Infantry Division’s first bloody tour in 2003-04, I didn’t need to ask.